Posted on October 15, 2025
hiroshi kamiya and the tower of youth
recently I was chatting with a friend about old-school fansubs, and we laughingly recalled those heady days of youth where you’d have to wait months at a time for an episode, or how subbing groups might even disappear all together without finishing what they started.
an anecdote of mine rose up from the depths, which I recounted without a second thought: a voice actor in a show I loved had been injured before being able to finish recording his lines and had to be replaced by someone else for the final episode – and how out of devotion, I waited to finish the series until the fansub group was able to tackle the DVD version, with the original actor’s voice.
afterwards, I wondered – this would have been nearly 20 years ago at this point, but – was it even true? read on to find out…
Read MorePosted on October 6, 2025
setting the stage for chandler and nabokov
when a raymond chandler postscript short enough to almost go unnoticed had me dredging the archives, I realized I might have to reopen a case from my past – one that may be impossible to solve…
Posted on September 30, 2025
tomohisa yuge and the case of the stolen bedroom
as must be obvious by this point, I’m a big fan of kamen rider – and when you’ve seen 35+ seasons of a show, you’re bound to have some favorites. setting aside the showa seasons as their own category (since to me, they’re just incomparably good), I’m particularly fond of the seasons from the early to mid 2000s. there’s just something about them that clicks, y’know?
one season in particular that has permanently burrowed its way into the rotten apple of my brain is the 2002 season kamen rider ryuki, the twelfth installment of the franchise. now, I could go on and on about the protagonists or the plot – but I’m not here to sell you on ryuki. no, today I’m here to solve a mystery… one involving manga, magazines, and one very particular teen model… was this my toughest case yet? read on to find out!
Read MorePosted on September 23, 2025
of william morris, julio cortázar, and dragons
for the past year I’ve been reading Fiona MacCarthy‘s biography of William Morris (a low and slow reading, if you will) and now, through a gradual accumulation of coincidences, my head is full of dragons.
Read MorePosted on July 24, 2025
Yves’ digicam choice is no Soft Error!
forgive the pun, but this morning I was delighted to discover that a musician I follow – Yves (former Loona, now solo) – used a digicam I have in my collection in some of her album art! from the poster for the listening party, we can see more details:
as far as I can tell, this appears to be a Casio Exilim EX-Z50 with the logo photoshopped off! I may well be wrong – many models within a numbered range have similar button layouts – but this one struck me with pleasant familiarity when I first saw it, because it’s one of my own most-used digicams. it’s a decent lil guy – sturdy yet compact, it’s got great battery life and gets the job done. a good choice, if I do say so myself ;^)
Posted on July 11, 2025
the mystery of the calbee cards
while doing research for a future project, I noticed something strange… was it a figment of my imagination? or had a phantom kamen rider appeared?! read on to find out!
Read MorePosted on July 6, 2025
spotted a fun lil shonen tanteidan reference
came across it while reading through Ghost Hunt for a future project :^)
read right to left
Posted on July 3, 2025
Kamen Rider Cafe Culture – rating system
as observant readers will know, I am a huge fan of the tokusatsu franchise kamen rider – having watched the whole thing (watching week-to-week these days, as it airs), one thing that always stuck out to me was that cafes, bars and restaurants crop up in over half the seasons, often serving as some kind of “HQ” for the lead characters to come back to. so, I got to thinking – I should review these joints! both as dining establishments, but also to try and understand a little bit more about what purpose they serve in the plot as a whole. read on to hear more about the rating system I’ve been devising as the first part of this series!
Read MorePosted on July 2, 2025
Detectives These Days Are (driving me) Crazy
I’ve been watching less and less anime as it airs these days – perhaps because I prefer watching things once they’re complete, or maybe it’s because of hype fatigue… whatever the core reason, taste-testing my first show of the summer 2025 season certainly did not fill me with confidence that my viewing habits would change any time soon. if you’ve been round these parts for any amount of time, what piqued my interest about this show should be immediately obvious – a past-his-prime, ex-teen detective, aging out of precociousness while taking on a high school girl as his assistant? sounds like themes I’m interested in as a baseline, certainly, so I was bound to check it out. which, with hindsight, I rather wish I hadn’t! what left me feeling so sour about Detectives These Days Are Crazy? read on to find out!
Read More
